You've Got a Friend

by Judi Curtin

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s like something you’d see in a really sad movie – except it’s real. The thing is though, we’ve learned loads about my dad, and what happened to Pablo, but I’m not sure how we’re supposed to fix anything. We know Dad felt like his family was ignoring him, but we couldn’t change that in 1975, and we can’t change it now either. It’s in the past, and the damage has been done.’

  ‘Damage can be fixed though, can’t it?’

  ‘I guess – but how?’

  ‘Well there’s one thing I still don’t get – and it might be important.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s about Stephen.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You said he’s always kind of distant with your dad?’

  ‘Yeah, he is – he’s been like that for as long as I can remember.’

  ‘But why? We both know now why your dad was sad, but Stephen was the one who got all the attention and all the toys. His mum and dad fussed over him all the time, and cooked his favourite food, and made him feel special. He didn’t lose his precious cat like your dad did. Stephen was sick, and then he got better – big deal. So why did he end up acting all weird with your dad?’

  ‘I have no clue – and no clue how we can find out either. I don’t want to go back to 1975 right now – I’m afraid the police might be looking for us.’

  ‘True,’ said Beth. ‘But we could find out the old-fashioned way. Why don’t you just ask Stephen the next time you see him?’

  I knew that couldn’t be as easy as it sounded, but we were nearly home, so I decided to save the argument for another day.

  * * *

  Mum was reading when we walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, girls,’ she said, without looking up from her book. ‘Did you have a nice walk?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was—’ I stopped talking for a second. ‘That song on the radio,’ I said then. ‘I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t remember where.’

  ‘I love that song,’ said Mum. ‘But for some reason it always made your dad feel sad. He’d never tell me why. I used to tease him and say it must have reminded him of an old girlfriend or something.’

  Then the chorus came on, and immediately I was back in the treehouse, in 1975, and Dad was cuddling Pablo and singing to him.

  Beth looked at me, and I knew she remembered too.

  ‘What’s that song called?’ she asked.

  ‘“You’ve Got a Friend”,’ said Mum.

  I could feel tears coming to my eyes. No wonder it made Dad feel sad. He sang it to Pablo, when he thought that he was his only friend in the world. Did he worry that Pablo couldn’t understand why he had to be sent away? Did he cry when he thought about Pablo waiting for him to come back and rescue him?

  Now Mum put down her book and looked at us properly for the first time. Too late, I remembered Beth’s clothes.

  Mum started to laugh. ‘Have you been invited to a fancy-dress party, Beth?’ she asked.

  Beth went red. ‘No, Charlotte … I … well … you see what happened was …’ she said.

  ‘We were just messing around,’ I said. ‘You know – pretending we were—’

  And then I remembered. ‘Your real clothes,’ I said to Beth. ‘Where did—?’

  ‘Molly’s right,’ said Mum. ‘Where did you leave your real clothes, Beth? When you went out you looked so lovely.’

  And then I remembered the worst part. ‘You were wearing my jeans!’ I said.

  ‘So where are they now?’ asked Mum. ‘And your nice blue top?’

  Mum doesn’t usually give Beth a hard time (which drives me crazy), but she’s a bit obsessed with us minding our stuff.

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth. ‘They’re—’

  Then Mum looked at my hoodie. ‘What’s that stain?’ she said. ‘That hoodie was clean this morning. Do you think I have nothing else to do all day besides washing your clothes?’

  I looked at my sleeve and saw the dark patch of Beth’s blood, but before I could answer, Mum was looking at something on Beth’s wrist.

  ‘Is that a hospital wristband?’ she asked. ‘What’s going on? What on earth have you two girls been up to today?’

  Well, we were trying to fix Dad, so we just went back in time and we hung out with him when he was a little kid, and we saw Stephen when he was really sick and we saw Dad’s cat, who was totally cute and now we know why he won’t have a cat now and then Beth got knocked down, and she spent the night in hospital and I slept in a treehouse and …

  ‘Oh, this?’ said Beth. ‘It’s my friendship bracelet. It’s new – I only got it …’

  Mum put down her book. ‘Girls?’ she said, staring at us like she could see right into our brains and figure out what we weren’t telling her. I so don’t like it when she does that. Even when I haven’t done anything wrong, that look of hers makes me feel guilty. Beth pulled a chunk of her hair over her ear, hiding the plaster and the place where the nurse had cut her hair. If Mum ever saw that, she’d lose it completely.

  ‘Mum!’ I said. ‘You’re always telling us to turn off the TV and do imaginative stuff – and that’s what we were doing. We thought you’d be happy – instead of treating us like we’re criminals.’

  ‘And you were right, Charlotte,’ said Beth. ‘Being imaginative is so much fun. Beth and I are thinking we might make a Swingball set later.’

  Mum didn’t look convinced. I knew I had to distract her – and I knew exactly how to do it.

  ‘Didn’t you ever play dressing up when you were a little kid?’ I asked.

  Beth smiled. She’s known me for a long time and she knew exactly what I was trying to do.

  Mum gave a big sigh. ‘I loved to dress up when I was a girl,’ she said. ‘My sister Mary and I had a whole box of weird and wonderful clothes and accessories. We used to fight over who would wear my mum’s wedding dress and we …’

  Beth and I let Mum ramble on for a bit, and then we invented some important homework and went upstairs.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I found it hard to sleep that night. I couldn’t help thinking about my dad, and the cute little kid he’d once been. I realised that knowing about his past wasn’t going to solve anything. Finding out why he was sad was one thing, but fixing it was going to be a whole lot harder.

  Next day, Beth and I walked home from school together as usual. We were just at our front gate, and I was telling her about the film our science teacher had shown us.

  ‘And first it was like we were watching these really cool, exotic creatures,’ I said. ‘And they were waving their legs in the air and being really graceful, and then the teacher told us they were head lice, and it was so gross, and Barry screamed and I couldn’t stop scratching my head, and …’

  ‘Hey,’ said Beth. ‘Isn’t that your Uncle Stephen?’

  I looked where she was pointing and nodded. Last time I’d seen Stephen, he was a pale, sick little kid lying in a deckchair. Now it was very weird to see this strong, healthy grown-up walking towards us. Stephen is always nice to me, but I so didn’t want to see him right then.

  ‘You’ve got to ask him,’ said Beth.

  ‘But …’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Whatever. You should have promised anyway.’

  ‘She should have promised what?’ said Stephen, stopping beside us.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Hi, Stephen. This is my friend, Beth. I forgot to introduce you when we met with my dad before.’

  ‘Hi, Beth. Hi, Molly,’ he said. ‘How are you two girls today?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘Except we’re in a bit of a rush. We’ve got so much …’

  Beth kicked me. I glared at her and she glared back. We would probably have had a long glaring competition, except Stephen was giving us funny looks.

  ‘Er, Stephen, actually, there’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while,’ I said.

  ‘And wh
at’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, when you and my dad were kids, did you hang out together?’

  ‘That’s a strange question – why haven’t you asked your dad this?’

  ‘Well, I sort of tried once, but Dad … Well it didn’t work out. He really didn’t want to have that conversation with me.’

  Stephen rolled his eyes. ‘He never likes talking about hard stuff, does our Eddie.’

  That was a bit mean, but I just smiled at Stephen. ‘So won’t you tell us? Did you and my dad do fun stuff together back in the day?’

  Stephen put on that face that Mum does when you ask her about the olden days.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Eddie and I were the best of pals when we were little. We had this very cool treehouse in our garden, and we spent a lot of time there.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Beth, innocently, like she didn’t know the answer already.

  ‘Oh, the usual boy stuff, playing with model cars, collecting things – but mostly—’

  ‘Mostly what?’ I asked.

  ‘You know, I haven’t thought about this for many years,’ he said. ‘But when Eddie and I were seven or eight, we spent a lot of time writing stories. We came up with this character …’

  ‘Hector the Brave,’ said Beth and I together.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Stephen, ‘But how did you …?’

  ‘Lucky guess,’ I said. We’d need to be the best guessers in the world to get that one right, but Stephen was so busy remembering his childhood, that he didn’t comment.

  ‘Hector the Brave,’ he said. ‘Our very own superhero. Eddie and I planned to become authors when we grew up. We were going to write loads of Hector stories and become millionaires.’

  ‘So why didn’t that happen?’ I asked.

  ‘It seems foolish now,’ said Stephen. ‘But there was this horrible boy who lived near us. His name was Billy. He mocked Eddie and me mercilessly.’

  ‘I can imagine how awful that was,’ I said. That wasn’t hard – in my mind I could see Billy’s cheeky face. Mum always says that bullying tells you more about the bully than the victim, and I guess Billy had his own stuff going on. Only thing was, I didn’t care about Billy. I only cared about Dad and Stephen.

  ‘Eddie and I were quiet, shy boys,’ said Stephen. ‘We weren’t able to stand up to Billy. He made us believe that writing wasn’t cool, so we just stopped doing it. It’s frightening how strong peer pressure can be.’

  ‘I totally get why you stopped writing,’ I said. ‘You were only little kids, and Billy sounds like a brat. When you and Dad were older though, why didn’t you …?’

  Now it was like a shadow passed over Stephen’s face. All of a sudden he seemed stiffer and not so friendly anymore.

  ‘You’re asking a lot of questions about Eddie and me,’ he said. ‘What’s brought that on?’

  For a second I thought of making up a story about a school project on families, but then I stopped myself. Sometimes the truth is the only way to go.

  ‘Sorry if we sounded rude,’ I said. ‘It’s my dad. Since he got back, he’s been sad all the time. He hasn’t got any friends anymore, and … well I don’t know what to do to help him, but you’re his brother so I thought …’

  Stephen sighed. ‘Now you’re digging up ancient history,’ he said. ‘Things went wrong between your dad and me a very long time ago,’ he said.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Stephen looked at me for a long time and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  Did he want to walk away and end this conversation?

  Was he cross with me for being so cheeky?

  Was I just wasting my time?

  And then Stephen started to talk.

  ‘I was sick for a long time when I was eight or nine,’ he said. ‘I spent many long months in hospital, and Eddie never came to see me, not even once.’

  ‘But he wasn’t allowed!’ I didn’t mean to say the words, but they popped out all on their own.

  ‘He told you that?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just think that maybe in the olden days kids weren’t allowed in hospital – or maybe your parents were afraid my dad would get sick too if he hung around there.’

  ‘I never considered that possibility,’ said Stephen. ‘I simply thought that Eddie didn’t care about me. When my parents visited, they told me all about his daily life, and it sounded like he was having a wonderful time – as if he were too busy to care about me.’

  ‘That must have been tough,’ said Beth.

  ‘It was,’ said Stephen. ‘Things were very difficult for me. I was bored most of the time. I was weak and sick and pretty much confined to bed. Sometimes I was so unwell I could barely walk to the bathroom on my own, and every day I had to lie there and listen to my parents talking about the football matches Eddie was playing, and the birthday parties he was going to. It sounded as if he barely noticed I was gone – as if he was doing perfectly fine without me.’

  I looked at Beth. We’d never thought of it like that. We’d been so busy worrying about my dad, we’d never stopped to think what things were like for Stephen. Imagine spending months in hospital without a tablet or a games console to pass the time.

  Imagine not being able to message your friends or send them a picture of your dinner.

  Imagine thinking that your only brother was having a wonderful life, and couldn’t be bothered going to see you.

  ‘And then …’ Stephen stopped talking for a second. It was hard to tell for sure, but I thought his eyes were starting to fill up with tears. ‘And then, when I got home after all those months, I was looking forward to seeing Eddie again. I thought things would be just like before – but they weren’t. Eddie had grown taller while I was gone. He was almost as tall as me, and he was sturdier too – but that wasn’t the biggest change.’

  ‘What was the biggest change?’ I asked.

  ‘It was as if my cute and funny kid brother had vanished,’ he said. ‘The boy I came home to was so cold … so distant … I tried to talk to him … but … he seemed to be pushing me away.’

  ‘I’m just guessing here,’ I said. ‘But maybe Eddie was jealous of you?’

  ‘But that doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘I was the one who was sick. Why on earth would he …?’

  ‘Maybe he felt a bit left out – like you were getting all the attention?’ said Beth.

  ‘Did you get presents while you were in hospital?’ I asked, thinking of the big bags of toys Eddie had carried into the house. ‘Dad’s always going on about how kids nowadays have way more toys than he used to have, so if he didn’t have much, and you got loads of stuff, maybe …’

  ‘I did get a lot of presents,’ said Stephen. ‘But much of the time I was too sick to play with them – and anyway, playing on your own gets tiresome after a while. Most of the toys stayed in their packages and I was looking forward to sharing with Eddie when I got home, but when I got there he would hardly look at me. I couldn’t understand what was going on.’

  ‘Did you talk to your parents about this?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ said Stephen. ‘They worried so much about me, and I didn’t want to make things worse for them. Once though, a few days after I came home, my mother saw me crying and asked what had happened. I told her that Eddie wouldn’t play with me, and she suggested that I give him one of my toys.’

  ‘That was a good idea,’ said Beth.

  ‘I thought so too,’ said Stephen. ‘I’d have done anything to make things right, so I gave him my favourite thing – my View-Master.’

  ‘That was kind of you,’ I said, even though I had no clue what a View-Master was. ‘Did my dad like it?’

  ‘He threw it on the ground and it broke into tiny pieces,’ said Stephen. ‘And he said something I couldn’t understand. He said that a stupid toy would never make up for losing his favourite thing in the whole world.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Stephen,’ I said. ‘Sounds li
ke you being sick was a disaster for your relationship, and the whole Pablo thing can’t have helped.’

  And then Stephen smiled, which was really weird. ‘Pablo!’ he said. ‘Eddie loved that cat so much. He was such a little cutie – it’s so sad that we couldn’t keep him.’

  ‘I know it was your parents who made the decision,’ I said. ‘So it wasn’t really your fault - but I guess you still felt a bit guilty about it.’

  Stephen was looking at me like he had no clue what I was talking about, and too late, I remembered that Eddie was told to make up a story about why Pablo had to go.

  Didn’t Stephen ever think it was suspicious that Pablo got unmanageable on the exact day he came home from hospital?

  Had he never discovered the truth in all those years?

  How could one single lie last for so long?

  ‘Why would I feel guilty?’ asked Stephen. ‘Losing Pablo was nothing to do with me.’

  Beth and I looked at each other, and for a minute no one said anything. Then Stephen scratched his head. ‘Are you trying to tell me something here, Molly?’

  How could I answer that?

  I looked at him, and pretended it was one of those stupid questions grown-ups ask, when they already know the answer.

  ‘This all happened so long ago,’ said Stephen. ‘And I really can’t remember the details that clearly. You need to tell me the truth, Molly. Was Pablo sent away because of me? If that’s the case …’

  I really didn’t want to be the one to break it to him.

  ‘I think you and Dad need to have a talk,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Stephen. ‘Do you think so? Maybe … some time, in a week or two, that would be a good idea.’

  I smiled. ‘I can see why you and my dad were such buddies once upon a time – you’re exactly like each other. Didn’t you two ever learn that it’s good to talk about stuff?’

  Stephen didn’t say anything, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. I looked desperately at Beth, and luckily she came to my rescue.

  ‘My dad always says that there’s no time like the present,’ she said. ‘Molly and I were just on our way over to see Eddie. Why don’t you come along with us, Stephen?’